Escaping to Serenity

Escaping to Serenity

Every Monday my wife goes Sequence dancing or something like that. We agree to differ and I sit at home in one of those much needed moments of peaceful solitude that even the most ‘loved up’ married couples need from time to time. 

So I reach for the CD shelf and choose one of my favourite films.   I believe the term might be ‘go to film’ and there is a sort of comfort that I crave there..  I  avoid most ( but not all) of the soppy Disney films where all seems lost for the title character, before a tearfully happy resolution.  I need to know the outcome.  I want to be soothed not shaken.  I suppose it is some sort of security blanket, but I don’t care. Like a favourite poem it still does it for me.

Woe betides any who disturb this bubbled fantasy world.  Just as when I go countryside walking, I like to be alone with myself. Besides, I always miss so much when I watch something once or twice.  Even now I spot little details that I had previously missed.  It could be product placement, or the deeper meaning of a spoken line.  Whatever it may be I will watch every second with a soothing pleasure that is undiminished by the passage of time or multiplicity of viewings.

We have also visited several locations where some of my (and my wife’s) favourites were filmed.  Not as movie buffs, but to absorb in an unspoken way the emotions that particular film had previously evoked. Occasionally it will be as simple as the location where the film was shot.  Arthur’s Dyke, a Pauline Quirk film reveals the breathtakingly beautiful borderlands of Wales & England.   Or a fly on the wall film ‘Everest: The Hardest Climb’ Both now physically beyond me, but the actors or participants do the hard work for me.  With the latter I still get a bit dizzy just sat in my armchair!

I love as my former landlady put it ‘A good Boo’ (tearjerker) and will watch Love Actually or Sleepless in Seattle just for the resolution scenes at the end of the film.  I like to be left in that fairy-tale place, if only for a moment.  I STILL cry at the end of Cool Runnings; ; particularly when the East German advisory greets his Jamaican counterpart with a warm handshake and new respect.

I applaud the work of all the ground-breaking films and the directors who spawn them, but what can be better (for me I mean) than an emotional moment of pure joy?  We all need a ‘go to’ place sometimes.